


Business or Pleasure

by nerdyvixen



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: D/s overtones, Extremely Cursed Rarepairs, F/M, everyone is a disaster but Ruby makes it look cool, ft. Nic "Step on me please" Silver and Ruby "sure why not I've got a free afternoon" Carver
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:33:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24343570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdyvixen/pseuds/nerdyvixen
Summary: Nic wants Ruby to step on him at work but fails to think the logistics through.
Relationships: Alex Reagan/Richard Strand, Nic Silver/Ruby Carver
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	Business or Pleasure

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trash for this ship now.
> 
> Also pot cw towards the end.

“I don’t think we should be doing this.”

Ruby likes the man, she really, truly, _stupidly_ does in spite of any number of reasons not to, but Nic has the worst habit of getting cold feet at really inopportune times--in this instance, while they’re standing at the back door to the studio with his security badge in her hand. She sighs and rolls her eyes. “So sneaking into your office so we can have really inappropriate sex on your desk _wasn’t_ your idea?”

He has at least the grace to blush. “I _know_ I said I wanted to fuck in my office, but I’ll never hear the end of it if the interns are there.”

She snorts. “Correction: while you might have _meant_ ‘I want to fuck in my office,’ what you _actually_ said was, ‘Pretty please, ma’am, I don’t even have to come, I just want to be able to remember going down on you every time I look at my filing cabinet’--”

The blush that had started on his ears (and _fuck,_ wasn’t that charming, wasn’t that just another fun and exciting way he had worked himself under her skin) immediately burns over to his cheeks. “The security cameras _do_ record audio, Rubes.”

“Then maybe don’t have such a nice mouth saying such unprofessional things, and we wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

He sighs and tugs on his curls--a nervous habit. It’s endearing. She hates that she makes him nervous sometimes still, hates that she hates it, and doesn’t want to think too long and hard on the implications of that. “You’re really pretty,” he says.

“I know,” she allows.

“And I like it when you boss me around.”

“Oh, believe me.” She steps up closer to him and pushes him harder against the doorframe. “I know.”

“And I know,” he carries on, his voice a little strangled as she almost clinically unwinds the scarf around his neck to reveal the sturdy leather collar she’d bought especially for him, “that Alex is out of town this weekend, and the interns should all be going to some weird party, and Paul and Terry are in LA for a con, and that means no one should be here--”

“Mmhmm. That’s right,” she hums. His neck is there, and it’s really quite tempting, and there’s no time like the present: she leans against him, wriggles a little to get comfortable, then hooks a finger under his collar and drags her teeth against his skin. He whimpers and melts under her; she grins. “No one’s here but us,” she reminds him. “You, me, and the security camera I’m gonna show you how erase when we’re done. If you want to do this, now is the time.”

“I do, but--”

“If there’s a but involved, then we can go somewhere else.” She takes a step back and reaches up to take hold of his chin, gently bringing his gaze to hers. “Seriously, Nico. We can find somewhere else. I only want you to be uncomfortable in a way that you’ve asked me for.”

He looks at her for a moment, his face almost unreadable, before he carefully folds his hand around her wrist and tugs her back against him. “I don’t like to take my work home,” he says after a breath. She nods and moves her hand gripping his chin, slipping it to the base of his head instead. It’s easy to tangle her fingers in his curls, a familiar and comforting gesture, and she gently tugs on them to get him to continue. He sighs, content, and does so. “I've tried to set boundaries, you know? And I _like_ to challenge those spaces with you, but I guess I’m a little more reluctant to mix business and pleasure than I thought.” He laughs ruefully. “I definitely want to have sex with you in my office. I just didn’t really think through actually _getting_ there.”

“Okay,” she agrees easily. “So we don’t do it here.” 

She rises on her toes just a bit more--not like she needs much help, really, considering the dark green six-inch heels she’d bought so she could match the collar around his neck--and kisses him. It begins chaste enough, but he does make very pleasing little whimpers when she deepens any kiss she gives him, so she does, teasing her tongue along the seam of his mouth until his lips part. She rewards him with a happy little purr when his hands settle on her hips then dip lower, dragging her closer to him as he presses his thigh against her core. 

She likes that. He _knows_ she likes that. God, and he’d been _such_ a quick study, too, back when they first started hooking up, such a nice change from the people she’d taken home more because she was bored and they looked like they could keep her interest for an hour or two. He’s earnest, eager, intent, and he can do things with his tongue that leaves even _her_ impressed. 

They can relocate. Not a problem.

“We’ll go somewhere else,” she tells him after they part. He’s glassy-eyed and flushed, already half-hard even from a kiss, and no small amount of her preens at that. She rolls her hips against him; she’s always been shameless in the pursuit of mutual pleasure, and besides, who needs shame about sex? Nic clearly has enough for both of them. “We could go back to my hotel,” she suggests. “I’m staying in that one you like. I’ll go down on you in the stairwell again if you ask me nice enough.”

He clears his throat. She stills. There’s something in his face that she can’t quite parse, but she knows a little bit about the look in his eyes: it’s the same one he gets whenever he gets ready to ask Alex if she has any professional integrity left, the softest, most Canadian iteration of _once more into the breach._ He draws in a slow breath. “Or,” he says finally, carefully, “you could come back to mine.”

“Back to your place,” she repeats.

Slowly-- _glacially_ slowly, Jesus, Mary, and _Joseph,_ Nicodemus--he nods. “I have a home office,” he carries on, feeling each word out like he’s waiting for the ice beneath him to crack. “It’s not quite the studio, but I do have recording equipment. And security cameras. And you’re really very pretty, and I really do like you bossing me around, and...well, we’ve been doing...doing _this_ for long enough that--well, I mean, you _have_ had me naked and leashed to your desk in Chicago more than once. You should come see my house. I mean, if you want to.”

“See your house.” She sounds like a broken record, and she knows it, but this is a line they haven’t crossed. He’s been to her apartment exactly once, the second time they hooked up--Nic had ended up in Chicago more than he let on for the show while also pursuing his own research and work--but it had been too strange, too intimate to wake up next to each other in the same place where she had coffee and routinely forgot to put up folded laundry even though her dresser was right there. They hadn’t stopped hooking up after that, but they formed an unspoken agreement to hook up in anonymous places: hotels, motels, AirBnBs, bar bathrooms. They kept it simple, mostly straight-forward: they fucked, he said _thank you,_ she said _you’re welcome,_ and they both acted like they didn’t know each other inside and out while they were around anyone else.

But that doesn’t allow for the warmth that’s been growing rings in her chest, widening like a tree trunk when he smiles that damn goofy smile of his or when he texts her stupid memes or when he sends her pictures of his dog at midnight in a transparent attempt to start a conversation. It doesn’t allow for the way she always watches for the tension to leave his shoulders when he meets her at the airport. It doesn’t allow for the way she grows soft and pliant the longer she’s around him, all her edges replaced by something like fondness or worse--

“We don’t have to,” he says hurriedly. “If you don’t want to. It’s fine if you want to go back to your hotel. I know you like your space, and I--”

“I want to.”

He startles. “You do?”

“Do I ever say I want to do something that I don’t want to?” It’s a rote response, but she means it, and that’s not _surprising,_ exactly, but she _means_ it, means it, and strangely enough, that _is_ surprising. There is not a lot of room in her for softness, but Nic has expanded his place in her life to accommodate for more than she had ever thought she could give. “I--yeah. Yes. Yes, I want to go back to yours. Yes.”

“Rubes?”

Her eyes burn. “Don’t--”

He stares at her, all curly hair and _fuck,_ sincere concern. “Are--are you _upset_? Did I say something wrong? Like, if you were anyone else, I’d say you look like you’re ready to cry, but you’re _you_. Ruby, you made that bouncer at that metal show break down by telling him you expected better out of him.”

“Well, I _did_ ,” she says crossly. “He was being completely unreasonable and didn’t eject that guy we _both_ saw trying to chat up the bartender--”

“You had three edibles and four vodka shots,” he points out. “I'm not knocking it. I was _impressed_.”

“You should be. I’m very impressive.”

He nods, very stoically. “Of course you are.”

“Are you patronizing me? Because I’d like to invite you to remember the first time I got you off. You passed out on my boss’s desk.”

“I like you, too.”

She inhales sharply. 

“I mean, I’m pretty sure you like me,” he continues. “You get really angry when you like something. It’s that whole cute-aggression thing, I think.” His fingers trail up from her hips to the curve of her spine, where they trace little wandering paths up and back down. Nic’s brand of comfort is idleness, she knows--little distracted musings designed to turn her anxious mind away from a spiral, a cup of tea placed at her elbow as an afterthought, nonsense patterns charted against her skin while he tells her stories about the interns until she sleeps--but it strikes her suddenly that it’s not _exactly_ Nic’s brand of comfort.

Rather, it’s Nic’s brand of comforting _her_.

Because she’s listened to him comfort Alex over the phone and on the air: Alex gets plans, gets logic, gets simple facts and reassurances, all deliberate and careful. Because she’s listened to him comfort stressed interns: they get stories and commiserations, sometimes free food in the breakroom, all specifically chosen and doled out. Because she’s listened to him even attempt to comfort her boss, weirdly enough, and like _hell_ Richard Strand ever gets anything close to idleness.

But she does. She does, because he knows that she’s perpetually moving and accounting for a thousand variables to keep Strand’s professional life from spiralling as badly as his personal one. Her boss has always been one of the most important people in her world; young and directionless, she’d gotten her position with a careful blend of sideways truth, ambition, and a well-timed dressing-down of a researcher with no sense of boundaries which resulted in him fleeing Strand’s office. She likes to think that making men cry gets her where she needs to be every time, but the heart of the matter is that she’s lived the past several years doing her damnedest to make it up to her boss--to everyone, really--for taking a chance on her in the first place. She can’t stop moving because she knows every second counts.

Yet with Nic, things slow. He smells like cedarwood and oakmoss, and falling asleep next to him makes her think of what she figures falling asleep in the heart of a forest might be like. He’s steady. He doesn’t push. He treats her like she’s precious--and more than that, she know he believes she is, and such is the nature of Nic’s belief that it becomes fact.

She’s precious to him. And _fuck_ , he’s right. “I do like you,” she tells him. “A lot. A _lot_ , a lot.”

He smiles, soft and warm, and squeezes her hand. “Good. Because I like you a _lot_ , a lot, too.”

She can’t help it--she laughs, bright and easy, then hooks one hand around the base of his head and kisses him. “So back to your place?” she suggests, lightly scratching at his scalp while he preens. “I want to meet your dog. See your record player. Raid your fridge while you give me all your opinions on your vinyl collection. Probably steal one of your t-shirts. Drink an insane amount of coffee and then smoke while I tell you why half of your opinions on your vinyl collection are wrong.”

“Oh, you didn’t want me to beg for you in my soundbooth so I can send you the recording later?” he teases, kissing her in return, and _dammit_ , that’s definitely a little romantic flutter in her ribs, _dammit_ , there goes her tough-as-nails persona--

\--but he’s smiling, and he’s warm and sweet and at least half in love with her, and she’s half in love with him, and _really_ , she reasons, _who gives a fuck when I know how pretty he makes my name sound when he begs for me?_

“Hi-ho, Silver,” she shoots back with a cheeky grin. “Let’s go."

She turns to leave, her fingers interlaced with his, when there is a sudden flurry of sound behind the back door. She doesn’t have time to react beyond wondering why there’s something familiar about it before the door swings open, narrowly missing Nic. Adrenaline spikes through her. _My boss is dumb enough to think ghosts don’t exist, but I’ve seen what Nic brings home_ , she thinks wildly. _I’ve seen all the tapes. I know what’s out there._ She shoves Nic behind her, her hand going to her pocket with her pepper spray, when--

“What the hell are _you_ doing here?”

Really, all things considered, Ruby _knows_ she shouldn’t be surprised to see Alex at the door. Sure, Alex had told Nic that she was heading out of town for the weekend, and sure, that was part of the reason that Nic had arranged this trip of hers out in the first place, but this _is_ Alex Reagan, and when does she ever show up anywhere expected?

_About as often_ , Ruby realizes slowly, _as she shows up wearing_ that.

_That_ being a slinky little deep blue dress that ripples over her thighs like a river, along with some unexpectedly tall nude pumps and a striking pillarbox red lip. Nothing, however can take away from the two greater incongruities, namely the string of hickeys marching up her neck and also the fact that immediately behind her is Richard Strand, who _definitely_ has his hand on her ass and her lipstick across his throat.

“Hi, boss,” Ruby says brightly, ignoring both Alex’s shocked face and her own internal screaming. _Richard Strand fucks. Like, currently fucks. Dr. Richard “I Never Met A Daddy Issue I Couldn’t Poorly Repress” Strand fucks. And he makes out like a teenager._ “Didn’t think you’d be in town tonight. How’s the weather?”

“It’s fine,” Strand responds. He sounds vaguely concussed, though whether it's from seeing Nic and his assistant outside the door or from what Ruby suspects was probably a very nice blowjob is frankly anyone's guess. "Did you--are you here for business, Ruby?"

"Definitely not here for business." She glances down pointedly at her lace bra, clearly visible beneath her open leather jacket and tight black skirt. "More here for pleasure. Had a long weekend off, you know."

"Yeah," Nic chimes in; Ruby can feel him staring holes into Alex, who, appropriately enough, looks like she’s seen a ghost. "A nice, long weekend off and away from Seattle. I mean Chicago. Right, Rubes?"

“Yep,” she agrees easily. “Nice, long weekend away from Seattle. Chicago. Whichever. I get my places mixed up easily. But you _never_ get mixed up like that, do you, boss?” She blinks artfully. “I mean, Alex. Alex, you don’t _ever_ get places mixed up, do you?”

“No,” Alex says. “No, I...I don’t.”

“That’s what I thought!” Ruby grins, bright and unrepentant. “So what’s the weather like for you in...where did you say she was going, Nic? Puyallup?”

“Yep,” Nic affirms, not looking away from Alex and Strand. “Puyallup. For a haunted mansion because she ‘needed a break from this end-of-the-world stuff.’”

“Puyallup’s nice.” Alex smiles, or at least tries to, as she shifts from foot to foot. "Always is. Um, Richard, would you--?”

Strand blanches and jerks his hand back, shoving it in his pocket like he _hadn’t_ spent the entirety of this conversation with it firmly on Alex’s ass. “Yes, I hear Puyallup’s lovely this time of year,” he says, clearing his throat and trying without much success to hide from the smug grin Ruby can feel curling her lips. “I haven’t been there myself, but…”

“...but you’re always so good about separating your work and professional life,” Ruby cuts in blandly. “You’d never blur a line or anything like that. Not unless it was for something-- _someone_ \--monumental.”

She expects her boss to pale. She expects Alex to change the subject. But instead, a rosy flush blooms on Strand’s cheeks, and he reaches back out to wrap an arm around Alex’s waist. “Monumental, yes,” he agrees, bending down to press a kiss against her temple. She tilts her face up to his affection instinctively, and a small part of Ruby’s heart twinges to watch them. “Transformative, even. I would only expect the same from you.”

Ruby blinks. “What?”

“Well, you _are_ a consummate professional, Ms. Carver,” Strand says, pulling Alex closer to him. “You’d never jeopardize your job over something trivial.”

_Oh, he matched his tie to her dress,_ Ruby notes vaguely beneath the sudden wave of panic that she’s become 1) that easy to read and 2) that besotted with one Nicodemus Silver. _That’s cute. But her lipstick’s definitely on it, so it was probably a gag at some point, and that is just a mental picture I did_ not _need._

“She wouldn’t,” Nic cuts in. He hasn’t stopped staring at Alex in resigned horror. “She’s very dedicated. Very loyal.”

Alex snorts and glances pointedly at the collar around Nic’s neck. “Well, you’d know all about loyal, wouldn’t you?”

He goes scarlet. “You walked in on me _one time_ in college--”

“I still want to know how the _hell_ you got a sugar daddy during _orientation week_ \--”

Ruby snaps back to attention. “Okay, so we’re going to put a pin in that one, because I don’t want you to think for a minute you’re _not_ going to tell me all about that, Nico--”

“Nico?” Alex mutters. Nic sticks his tongue out at her.

“--but I’m sure that there’s plenty of pressing things going on in Puyallup that need your attention,” Ruby carries on, “and I know I have just _so much_ in Chicago that needs mine, so maybe we should all just...say goodnight. Move on. Enjoy ourselves and reconvene with a clean slate on Tuesday.”

“...not on Monday?” Strand asks.

She arches a brow at him. “You think I’m not taking a long weekend? I have _needs_. Looks like you do, too.”

“What?”

She glances down to where Strand has remembered to zip his trousers but not button them. “You’re not subtle, boss, but well done. You should be proud of yourself.”

He follows her glance, immediately flushes, and tries to pull together his haughtiest _I’m Dr. Richard Strand and therefore better than you_ face, which falls flat, considering the lipstick on his neck and--

_Wow, that’s an impressive hickey._

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says stiffly.

“I’m sure you don’t,” Ruby allows with a toothy grin. “But regardless, let’s just call it a night, and we’ll all touch base on Tuesday. I’m sure we’ll have some...debriefings...to go over, won’t we?”

“Yeah,” Alex agrees, staring at Nic harder than she probably needs to. “I’m sure we will. You know, we haven’t revisited all those journalism ethics conversations you’re so fond of in a while, Nic. I’m looking forward to seeing if you have any new insights you’d like to share with me.”

Nic visibly swallows, and when he speaks, his voice is strangled. “Perfect. I’ll just...put that on our meeting agenda. Yeah. Sounds great.”

“So we’ll just be going now,” Strand interjects, edging around Nic and Ruby on the steps and pulling Alex after him. “I’m sure Alex has a lot to do in Puyallup, and I have an _extremely_ full night ahead of me, as I’m sure you both do.”

She could rise to the bait, she knows, but then she could potentially lose the leverage she now has on her boss. After all, Strand has shame. _She_ does not. She’s a grown woman who happens to enjoy a rich and varied sex life, and if she happened to have fallen headfirst into _feelings_...well, she’s clearly not the only one, judging by the way Strand’s face softens when he looks down at Alex and the way Alex lights up at his gentle smile. “We do,” she says as she tucks herself against Nic’s side, trying not to preen when she feels Nic curl his arm over her shoulders. “Have a good one, boss.”

Strand studies them briefly, but he takes it as the dismissal she means and leaves with Alex and a little nod--and not, she notes, without surreptitiously attempting to button his pants.

She hears their car start, hears the wheels crunch over the gravel around the pothole in the parking lot, and after a moment, hears them leave. There is, around them, the steady quiet roar of traffic, the chattering of distant crowds, the faint chirps of night insects. Overhead is the velvet blue night, the sharp white glow of the security lights, and next to her, Nic Silver sags into what sounds like one hell of an existential crisis.

“I thought she’d been sleeping with Strand,” he says woodenly to no one in particular. “Like, we all heard the podcast. We _all_ knew.”

“Yes, we did,” Ruby agrees. _Did I leave that joint in my jacket pocket, or in Nic’s pocket?_ She pats her side--lighter, pepper spray, pocket knife...

“And I know that one of the lines Alex and I have always drawn is the whole idea of ‘do what you want on your own time, but don’t bring it into work.’”

“Sure.” She pats the other pocket. Safety scissors, zip ties, the bouncy ball they use for when his mouth is too full for a safeword...

“So I was able to ignore it, mostly, because she kept it out of work, and I kept this out of work, so she could ignore it, too.”

“That makes sense.”

“But now--” His voice rises in pitch, going more than a little twisted. He sucks in a breath. “Now I can’t say _anything_ about her professionalism because she _knows_.”

“Mmhmm.” She slips her hand into his jeans pocket, and _nope, not in that one, so it must be in...._

“She _knows_ , and she’s going to make sure that I don’t say anything about ethics in journalism ever again--”

_Ah, there it is._ She makes a little triumphant noise as she pulls out the joint and then her lighter. “Hey, Nico?” she says, lighting up the joint and taking a drag. “Chill out. Seriously.”

He stares at her, his eyes wild even as she exhales slowly. “This is _very serious_ , Rubes--”

She offers him the joint; he immediately takes it and takes a hit, then another, then, surprisingly enough, another. His etiquette is normally better than this; he must be upset. “I don’t think it’s as bad as you’re worried about,” she says after he finally hands the joint back to her. “Honestly.”

His sighs and rakes his hand through his curls. “You know I can’t call her out on being too close to Strand now, right?”

“I know. But, on the plus side, she can’t call you out, either,” she points out. “It’s a stalemate. Now, do you want to go back to your place now, or do you want to smoke a little more and _then_ Uber back?”

Nic tilts his head. “What?”

“I mean, I don’t want either of us to drive if we’ve been smoking. Plus, you know, the whole thing where neither of us _actually_ drove here--”

“No, no, not that.” He reaches out and settles his hands on her hips. His fingers drum against her; he’s thinking, and he needs a little bit of movement to keep the worst of his anxiety from having too much of a say, she knows. “A stalemate.”

“Well, yeah.” Ruby catches one of his hands in her free one. She likes holding his hand. It’s silly and probably juvenile, but there’s something about having his hand in hers that settles her every time. “She can’t call you out if she’s doing the same damn thing you are. I mean, the circumstances are a little different, but with my job and your job, there’s still enough of a conflict of interest there to be legally dicey. If she calls you out, she’s being a hypocrite, too, and she won’t do that. She’s too invested in my boss to do that. Hell, he’s too invested in _her_ to let her do that.”

“You’re right,” Nic says slowly. “She won’t say anything. Not until the story is finished, and by then, she won’t have any reason to.”

“Exactly.” She grins at him. “Now, do you wanna go back now, or do you want to smoke more first?”

He pauses, then lifts their joined hands to deposit a kiss against her wrist. “Actually,” he ventures, “I think I want to have sex in the studio.”

“What?”

“In Alex’s office, specifically, I think,” he muses. “She’s got that couch so you can sit down. I know your feet probably hurt.”

“Just because I wear Vans most of the time doesn’t mean I’m not used to wearing stilettos, Nic,” she retorts automatically. “I know your proclivities. Trust me, I made allowances. But--” She nods at the joint still in her other hand. “Are you sure you want to? This isn’t the pot talking?”

He grins--actually _grins_ , that same blasted smile that had started this whole mess in the first place. He’d flown out to Chicago in a last-ditch effort to keep some sense of professionalism in all this mess and had smiled at her so cheekily when she suggested that Strand couldn’t get it up without peer review. He’d ended up flat on Strand’s desk with his jeans around his ankles while she sucked him off, and things had spiralled from there. “You said you know how to erase the security footage, right?”

She shakes herself from oddly pleasant memories; the carpet in Strand’s office had been hell on her knees, but Nic had more than made up for that when he’d gathered his senses back together enough to return the favor. “Of course I do.”

“Well, I figure that Alex probably won’t want her and Strand stumbling out of here on tape,” he says. “And if we’re going to be at a stalemate, it wouldn’t hurt to have _something_ in my back pocket. She can owe me a favor.”

Ruby blinks. “Nicodemus Silver, are you being _manipulative?_ ”

“You know,” he says in mock surprise, “I think I am.”

She leans down and stubs out the joint, then tucks it back in his jeans pocket so she can wrap her arms around his neck. “I’ve never been more attracted to you than in this moment,” she informs him.

“That sounds like a challenge to me.”

“Mmhmm.” She runs her hands through his curls and watches him try not to whimper. “I’m sure you’ll rise to the occasion.”

“Oh, that’s _not_ a problem.”

“I can tell.” She nips at the skin just below his ear until she knows the skin there has bloomed with a tiny rosebud _Ruby was here._ “Hey, Nico?”

“Yes, ma’am?” 

“Get in there so we can be really unprofessional.”

_He really does take direction well,_ she muses as Nic all but slams his security badge against the keypad to get the door unlocked. He pushes the door open and makes a show of bowing her inside. _And he’s funny, and he can keep up, and he’s real cute when he’s trying to be petty. I think--_

“Three,” he says out of nowhere as the door shuts behind them.

“What?” She squeezes her eyes shut and then opens them in an attempt to get a texture in the darkness. _You’d think with all the demon bullshit, they’d have automatic lights in this joint…_

“Three,” he repeats as he unerringly leads her down the hallway to Alex’s office. “I’m pretty sure that’s how many times I need to make you come before I’ve earned taking you home with me. What do you think?”

“I was thinking I was actually going to ask you very, very nicely to fuck me but not let me come until we _did_ get back to yours,” she blurts out. “I thought you’d earned that. And I want--” He stops in front of Alex’s office door, but she can’t stop talking. “--I want to come while I’m in your house. In your bed, actually. And I want to have sex in your bed with you, and I want to wake up in your bed with you, and I want to steal one of those fucking flannels that you’re always wearing, and I want--fuck, Nico, I want to _earn_ being in your home. I know I’m always frustrating you. You always frustrate me but I don’t let on, so I thought--”

He silences her with a kiss against her forehead. “Hey, Rubes?”

“Yes?” Her voice is small. Her eyes have adjusted enough to the darkness now that she can see his face, but she almost doesn’t need it, his smile is so bright. 

“You don’t have to earn that with me,” he tells her. “I invited you in because I like you, and because I know you like me, too. So don’t worry, okay? This isn’t transactional. I like you. You like me. The rest is just fun stuff we do together because we like to.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“That part of it is,” he says. “I mean, barring the whole, ‘hey, we have to erase the security footage’ thing.”

“Ooh, that’s right, I need you to tell me if the security cameras are controlled at the front desk or--”

He laughs, bright as sunlight, bright as Alex has ever laughed, and she understands in a flash exactly why both she and her boss are so thoroughly soft for these two. “Can it wait? We can compromise. One orgasm here, and then I’ll give you as many as you like when we get back.”

She mock-sighs and tries Alex’s door, delighted to find out that it’s already unlocked. “You drive a hard bargain, Nico.”

“I’m awful and deserved to be punished,” he agrees happily as she herds him in with a smack on his ass. “Oh, what a terrible fate--”

She clucks her tongue. “I know, I’m just the _worst_ , making you work _so_ hard--”

“What can I say?” He leads her to the desk, then sinks to his knees in front of her; she doesn’t need the lights on to know the exact look on his face, heated and devoted and wholly _hers_. He doesn’t wait for direction, instead pushing her skirt up past her hips and tugging her underwear to the side so he can sink his fingers into her, and _mine, mine, he wants to be mine, and I want to be his--_ “I guess I’m a bigger fan of taking my work home with me than I thought.”


End file.
